Many parents and the children they send to college are paying rapidly rising prices for something of declining quality. This is because “quality” is not synonymous with “value.”

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, believes that college has become, for many, merely a “status marker,” signaling membership in the educated caste, and a place to meet spouses of similar status — “associative mating.” Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 — enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions). Employers value this signifier as an alternative to aptitude tests when evaluating potential employees because such tests can provoke lawsuits by having a “disparate impact” on this or that racial or ethnic group.

In his “The Higher Education Bubble,” Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices — and lowered standards — to siphon up federal money. A recent Wall Street Journal headline: “Student Debt Rises by 8% as College Tuitions Climb.”

Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that as many people — perhaps more — have student loan debts as have college degrees. Have you seen those T-shirts that proclaim “College: The Best Seven Years of My Life”? Twenty-nine percent of borrowers never graduate, and many who do graduate take decades to repay their loans.

In 2010, the New York Times reported on Cortney Munna, then 26, a New York University graduate with almost $100,000 in debt. If her repayments were not then being deferred because she was enrolled in night school, she would have been paying $700 monthly from her $2,300 monthly after-tax income as a photographer’s assistant. She says she is toiling “to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back.” Her degree is in religious and women’s studies.

The budgets of California’s universities are being cut, so recently Cal State Northridge students conducted an almost-hunger strike (sustained by a blend of kale, apple and celery juices) to protest, as usual, tuition increases and, unusually and properly, administrators’ salaries. For example, in 2009 the base salary of UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion was $194,000, almost four times that of starting assistant professors. And by 2006, academic administrators outnumbered faculty.

The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald notes that sinecures in academia’s diversity industry are expanding as academic offerings contract. UC San Diego (UCSD), while eliminating master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate “a student’s understanding of her or his identity.” So, rather than study computer science and Cervantes, students can study their identities — themselves. Says Mac Donald, “ ‘Diversity,’ it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism.”

She reports that UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion. UC Davis has a Diversity Trainers Institute under an administrator of diversity education, who presumably coordinates with the Cross-Cultural Center. It also has: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; a Sexual Harassment Education Program; a diversity program coordinator; an early resolution discrimination coordinator; a Diversity Education Series that awards Understanding Diversity Certificates in “Unpacking Oppression”; and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in “Understanding Diversity and Social Justice.” California’s budget crisis has not prevented UC San Francisco from creating a new vice chancellor for diversity and outreach to supplement its Office of Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and the Diversity Learning Center (which teaches how to become “a Diversity Change Agent”), and the Center for LGBT Health and Equity, and the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution, and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committees on Diversity, and on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, and on the Status of Women.

So taxpayers should pay more and parents and students should borrow more to fund administrative sprawl in the service of stale political agendas? Perhaps they will, until “pop!” goes the bubble.

I went to college and paid as I went. A student loan was nothing that even entered into my mind. The time was different and I was interested in the education rather than living away from home and having the funds to live beyond my means. My parents weren't rich so it was all on me.

I would recommend to anyone going to college to do their first 2 years at a local community college and then do as much online stuff as possible. Spending as little time as you can living in a manner that starts you off owing more than you will most likely make in your first 5 years you have a job.

I went to college and paid as I went. A student loan was nothing that even entered into my mind. The time was different and I was interested in the education rather than living away from home and having the funds to live beyond my means. My parents weren't rich so it was all on me.

I would recommend to anyone going to college to do their first 2 years at a local community college and then do as much online stuff as possible. Spending as little time as you can living in a manner that starts you off owing more than you will most likely make in your first 5 years you have a job.

A lot more people are. However few work their way through anymore. I think the loans set up that incentive.

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“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize“~ Voltaire

A lot more people are. However few work their way through anymore. I think the loans set up that incentive.

where are you getting that few students work their way through college?

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That rabbit is crazy; I'm Brian Waters!

Kotter: "You are lucky I'm truly not the vindictive or psycho type...I'd be careful from now on, and I'd just back the hell off if I were you....otherwise, the Mizzou "extension office" life might get exciting"

Kotter: "You are lucky I'm truly not the vindictive or psycho type...I'd be careful from now on, and I'd just back the hell off if I were you....otherwise, the Mizzou "extension office" life might get exciting"

A lot more people are. However few work their way through anymore. I think the loans set up that incentive.

You're missing the point. FEW PEOPLE CAN AFFORD TO WORK THEIR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE. My wife graduated from KU owing 5k in 2003. She applied for any and every scholarship available to her and received almost every single one. There was a time when working your way through school was a viable option, but today that is not the case. Unless you luck out and receive a full ride scholarship, student loans are pretty much your only option. My brother graduates this year and will owe 62k in student loans, and thats while working his way through school paying as he went. The days of getting a good education at a affordable price are are long gone.

You're missing the point. FEW PEOPLE CAN AFFORD TO WORK THEIR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE. My wife graduated from KU owing 5k in 2003. She applied for any and every scholarship available to her and received almost every single one. There was a time when working your way through school was a viable option, but today that is not the case. Unless you luck out and receive a full ride scholarship, student loans are pretty much your only option. My brother graduates this year and will owe 62k in student loans, and thats while working his way through school paying as he went. The days of getting a good education at a affordable price are are long gone.

It looks like you're the one missing the point. One of the main reasons it's too expensive to work your way though college now is that we've had so much easy money pumped into the college system through student loan programs over the past few decades.

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“The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they’re not.” - Hillary Clinton

It looks like you're the one missing the point. One of the main reasons it's too expensive to work your way though college now is that we've had so much easy money pumped into the college system through student loan programs over the past few decades.

It was easier to get money for school years ago than it is today. Before they never pulled your credit , now they do a complete credit check, so I'm not sure where the "easy money" is coming from. The reason why you could work through school is because it was affordable to do so-loans where not always the first option. Now , they are your only option if your parents aren't loaded, or if you don't earn a scholarship.

I went to college and paid as I went. A student loan was nothing that even entered into my mind. The time was different and I was interested in the education rather than living away from home and having the funds to live beyond my means. My parents weren't rich so it was all on me.

I would recommend to anyone going to college to do their first 2 years at a local community college and then do as much online stuff as possible. Spending as little time as you can living in a manner that starts you off owing more than you will most likely make in your first 5 years you have a job.

Have you gone back and looked what that university that you paid as you go is charging now compared to what you paid? I did the same as you, and it cost me just over $1000 a semester, but now the cost at the same school is $2500 for just 12 hours, and that is without all the new fees they have added.